Thursday 6 October 2016

Genie Documentary



Genie documentary

What theories are mentioned?
When is the critical period of language development and who suggested it was before puberty?
What is the linguistic conclusion?
Was what happened to Genie ethical?
What theorists support this?



  • She was a 15 year old girl, who had been kept in social isolation for 13 years, when she was released she looked like a 6 year old girl.
  • She was mistreated- left in darkness, there was no toys in the house, no sign of a child living there.
  • She was in nappies, couldn’t walk, and couldn’t talk.
  • Her father lost his mother and this is when the strange behaviour towards genie occurred.
  • Its suggested that language cannot be learnt after puberty, at the age she was found she would have been post puberty.
  • To start with she was able to learn single words but shortly after she stopped learning.
  • She wasn’t able to but words together to make a sentence.
  • “language is words, structure and grammar”
  • The left part of the brain is where learning language comes from but this part of her brain wasn’t stimulated therefore she was unable to learn and didn’t develop the capacity for language.

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